A very pretty anecdote is told of such a wife and a gaming husband.
In order to simplify the signs of loss and gain, so as not to be overburdened with the weight of gold and silver, the French players used to carry the representation of their fortunes in small boxes, more or less elegant. A lady (who else could have thought of such a device?), trembling for the fate of her husband, made him a present of one of these dread boxes. This little master-piece of conjugal and maternal affection represented a wife in the attitude of supplication, and weeping children, seeming to say to their father—THINK OF US!....
It is, therefore, only with the view of avenging good and honourable women, that I now proceed to speak of those who have disgraced their sex.
I have already described a remarkable gamestress—the Persian Queen Parysatis.(96)
(96) Chapter III.
There were no gamestresses among the Greeks; and the Roman women were always too much occupied with their domestic affairs to find time for play. What will our modern ladies think, when I state that the Emperor Augustus scarcely wore a garment which had not been woven by his wife, his sister, or grand-daughters.(97)
(97) Veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est, ab uxore et filia nepotibusque confecta. Suet. in Vita Augusti.
Although deeply corrupted under Nero and the sovereigns that resembled him, the Roman women never gambled among themselves except during the celebration of the festival of the Bona Dea. This ceremonial, so often profaned with licentiousness, was not attended by desperate gambling. The most depraved women abstained from it, even when that mania was at its height, not only around the Capitol, but even in the remainder of the Empire.
Contemporary authors, who have not spared the Roman ladies, never reproached them with this vice, which, in modern times, has been desperately practised by women who in licentiousness vied with Messalina.
In France, women who wished to gamble were, at first, obliged to keep the thing secret; for if it became known they lost caste. In the reign of Louis XIV., and still more in that of Louis XV., they became bolder, and the wives of the great engaged in the deepest play in their mansions; but still a gamestress was always denounced with horror. 'Such women,' says La Bruyiere, 'make us chaste; they have nothing of the sex but its garments.'